Sunday, August 14, 2016

The Long Shadow









                       The Long Shadow

Review of Daniel Geary, Beyond Civil Rights: The Moynihan Report and Its Legacy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. 288 pg. and Susan Greenbaum, Blaming the Poor: The Long Shadow of The Moynihan Report on Cruel Images About Poverty, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2015.

 

In Rochester NY where I live, a recent poverty initiative has been proposed to address some of most deeply entrenched poverty areas of this country.  History casts its long shadow over the understanding of poverty embodied in these initiatives. Short on proposals to empower the community, the reading list for the working groups are filled with reports that view poverty as an individual. psychological or social problem rooted in family structure and individual psychological trauma. You can find Paul Ryan and the Cato Institute as well as the work of several liberal think tanks on their suggested reading list, but nothing of the tradition of Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward. The role of political economic structure in the creation of inequality and the continuing prevalence of poverty gets nary a mention.

Much of this history, according to both Daniel Geary and Susan Greenbaum, was shaped by the views first formulated in Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s infamous 1965 “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” which has generally come to be called “the Moynihan Report.” Moynihan was working at the Department of Labor in the Johnson administration when he prepared a report for the President hoping to influence Johnson’s War on Poverty. The report exerted a tsunami-like effect on thinking about poverty in America, sweeping away more critical and radical views of poverty. It brought the concept of the pathological black family into mainstream discourse. Moynihan subsequently was a major force in the culture wars of the later 60’s and 70’s, leading the charge of neo-conservative intellectuals. The two interesting books under review here look back on 50 years of influence of the Moynihan report and attempt to assess its impact on public policy and culture.  How did this report, which was first meant for a small circle of government officials and itself short on prescription, come to have such a profound influence on the political debates of its time?

The Moynihan Report argued that the breakdown of family structure in African American communities was the main source of its persistent poverty. As Greenbaum notes in her lucid summary, despite the general rise in prosperity in the country, African American families were not prospering.  In fact, increases in employment lead to increases in welfare. Moynihan argued that jobs alone would not end welfare “dependency”: “The fundamental problem . . .. is that of family structure” (Greenbaum, p. 3). The economic progress of the African American community was being held back by the high number of fatherless families. Wherever such a family structure exists, a “tangle of pathologies” follows; including crime, delinquency, teenage pregnancy, and elevated school dropout rates. Men without jobs were stripped of their masculinity and boys reared in matriarchal families were set on a path of failure that reached across generations.

Both venerated and vilified, Moynihan was a complex figure whose exact views are not easily pigeonholed. He was a Kennedy/Johnson liberal with social democratic leanings who later became associated with the neo-conservatives, yet as a Senator in later life he opposed Bill Clinton’s regressive welfare reform. In the early stages of his career he retained elements of social democratic theory.  He agreed with civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. that the question of equality required more than just civil rights, but social and economic ones. Moynihan supported measures that would strengthen social rights such as a family wage and even a guaranteed annual income while seeing cultural differences as crucial. The difference between Moynihan’s view and the more radical versions of social democracy lies both in his cultural conservatism and in his elitist and technocratic approach, which was typical of many intellectuals of the cold war era.

Understanding the conflicts and even contradictions in Moynihan’s work requires seeing the interrelation between several different elements of his approach: his social democratic version of vital center liberalism which accepted the pluralistic approach to ethnicity and was uneasy with social protest against pluralism; his Catholicism which simultaneously encompassed commitments to social equality and a culturally conservative paternalist notion of the family; and a technocratic view of social reform in which social science and not popular mobilization was the motor of social change.

In Daniel Geary’s reading, Moynihan’s position reflected the tensions in the postwar liberal conception of equality.  Moynihan, like other liberals, understood the barriers to equality that African Americans faced, but he retained a liberal commitment to meritocracy. He believed that individuals had to be able to compete in an open marketplace. These ambiguities made Moynihan’s theory usable by many different groups. As Geary notes, “The report contained the seeds of a left-wing challenge that deepened liberals’ war on poverty and a neo-conservative attack on the welfare state” (p. 9).  Like many left intellectuals, Moynihan moved from the New Deal Left to the so called vital center. These vital center liberals were strongly anticommunist and sought order and valued consensus over conflict. They were often at odds with the protest movements of the time. Moynihan was highly critical of community action programs in his work Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding. He believed in a regulated capitalism and in the importance of integrating labor unions as a buttress against communism. But this labor accord was to be strictly capitalist. The Moynihan Report articulated tensions that are still with us today.

Moynihan had earlier analyzed the problems of ethnic groups in American society when Nathan Glazer invited him to write a chapter for Beyond the Melting Pot, a role which expanded to coauthor. Like Glazer he equated the situation of African-Americans with other ethnic groups in American society who had experienced upward mobility and integration into American society. In the north at least Glazer and Moynihan saw fewer impediments to this advancement than in the Jim Crow south. Thus, the failure of the African Americans to advance in the north needed a different explanation. In addition to an insensitivity to the uniqueness of the African American experience in society Geary argues that this view of American society as a pluralistic competition of ethnic groups was inconsistent with Moynihan’s economic assessments of the effects of inequality and class. Like many liberals of his time he thought that the problems of inequality could be solved within the bounds of elite pluralism through the application of social science.

Moynihan’s biography combined with his politics to shape his perspective. He was the product of a broken family. His father left the family when he was young, throwing the family into chaos. He was raised a Catholic and attended Catholic school as a youth. He absorbed elements of Catholic social teachings which lead him in diverging directions. He was influenced, on the one hand by the progressive aspects of catholic social philosophy, especially the emphasis on the rights and dignity of workers. On the other hand, he also shared the patriarchal assumptions of the church. The male dominated family was the basic unit of society, and the pillar of economic and social stability. While Moynihan’s fusion of new deal economic liberalism and social conservatism was not unique it decisively shaped his interpretation of ethnic and racial matters and later lead him in a different direction,

Like many of his fellow Kennedy/Johnson liberals, Moynihan took a technocratic approach to reform, trusting the power of social scientific knowledge to diagnose and remedy social ills. Moynihan and his peers in the policy community felt that use of statistics provided precise and irrefutable proof of social patterns. As Geary argues the legitimacy of the policy intellectual was linked to the perception that they were neutral scientific advisers, not political partisans. They were social technicians, using their knowledge to fine tune society. In Moynihan’s view the statistical evidence in favor of what came to be called “Moynihan’s scissors” –the view that welfare usage increased at the same time as employment increased -- was definitive evidence that the mother-centered families in African American culture led to a pathological dependency on government aid. Of course, Moynihan’s evidence did not in fact “prove” this in any definite way. But his assumption that a statistical correlation established a causal connection, and his unexamined commitment to a patriarchal family structure, had lasting impacts on welfare policy.

By the late 60’s Moynihan’s outlook began to change. After Nixon was elected, Moynihan went to work for him, and while supporting Nixon’s notion of a basic minimum income for all, he also famously counselled Nixon to employ benign neglect in dealing with problems of race and poverty. How did Moynihan’s analysis change its meaning and purpose?  One answer is rooted in a changing perception of what government can do to bring about change. Post war liberals’ faith in scientifically directed social change and government intervention declined. They felt that social engineering had failed. Now the source of social ills more persistent; it was found in an excessive demand on government services it was unable to fulfill. Radical groups wanted too much too fast. African-Americans like other immigrant groups were supposed to “wait their turn” to get ahead. Moynihan allied with the journal. The Public Interest, the leading voice of neo-conservatives. Since centrist liberals were also skeptical of the capacity of popular action to achieve social change yet retained the pluralist model of liberal democracy, they had no option but to preach quiescence. They had no answer to the demands for greater equality and political participation by social movements.

Along with Glazer who felt that the ''The breakdown of traditional modes of behavior is the chief cause of our social problems”, Moynihan had become skeptical of creating change though deliberate social policy. While Moynihan’s commitment to equality as well as civil rights still seems apparent in his advocacy of a minimum wage, he was offended by the criticism of his work as racist. In contrast, he was pleased by the praise of conservatives like William Buckley who agreed with his emphasis on the moral deficiencies of the African American family. In allying with the right Moynihan gave credence to a fundamental rejection of equality that undermined his own position.  His views were used to lend credence to the conservative backlash against both civil rights and racial equality.

Greenbaum takes these issues in a more radical direction than Geary. The Moynihan report is less a reflection of the tensions in liberalism then its abandonment. She stresses the reception and use of Moynihan’s ideas and not its inner tensions. For Greenbaum,

Moynihan’s report came at a turning point in US history when funding for the adventurous social programs of the Johnson administration was cut to provide funding for the Vietnam war, and the urban riots of the 60’s were eroding support for social programs.  Moynihan’s report fueled a backlash: “Framed as a policy document to help uplift poor black families and correct past discrimination, it came to be regarded by both supporters and distractors as an indictment of African American culture, a pessimistic warning that legal rights and safety net programs would not be enough.” (p. 2)

Certainly, both Greenbaum and Geary give attention to the reception of Moynihan’s work. Critics challenged not just the causal explanations contained in the report, but the interpretive frameworks and normative commitments employed by Moynihan and his supporters. Black sociology for example, challenged the privilege of liberals to interpret African American experience to African Americans in an elitist way. Feminists challenged the patriarchal assumptions about the family and extensive changes in family life. Moynihan and his fellow centrist liberals however, proved singularly unable to acknowledge some of the legitimate issues these critics raised. 

Greenbaum’s book takes us beyond the debates of the 70’s, where Geary’s book essentially ends, to demonstrate how the long shadow of the Moynihan Report has had an impact on policy up to the present. Whereas the neo-conservatives still supported some version of the welfare state, the neo-liberalism of the 1980’s and beyond sought to roll it back. Moynihan’s view of the pathological black family became part of an activist and reactionary attempt to roll back the social welfare state. Greenbaum follows these debates from the 80’s through to recent attempts to commodify and privatize welfare and profit off the new neo-liberal deregulatory environment.

Moynihan’s original view of the mother dominated family as the prime source of delinquency and crime found its way into popular consciousness as a fear of the rebellious black man and the denigration of the poor black women as a welfare queen. The latter revives the old notion of the deserving poor. The images were carried forward to neo-liberal approaches to poverty. “Increasingly” Greenbaum writes, “poverty has been viewed as an individual problem that can be solved only by individuals making changes that enable their ascension into the middle class – gaining new skills or overcoming impediments like addiction.” (p 115). Neo-liberals pursue remedies like improving the manners and motivation for the poor to make them more acceptable to employers, to show proper work discipline and acceptance of authority. Other reformers sought to promote marriage, upgrade parenting skills and support for children to break the generational cycle of poverty. The lack of personal responsibility, not social inequality and political domination are the major causes of poverty.

Far from the benign neglect of the neo-conservative era, Greenbaum thinks neo-liberalism introduces of new forms of social engineering that are aimed at disciplining and shaping individual behavior to conform with the neo-liberal behavioral ideals. Greenbaum traces the consequences of the neo-liberal outlook on several issues, including marriage promotion programs, which locate the key to poverty eradication in intact families, the decimation of public housing which displaces the poor, breaks up their culture (which it sees as the basis of their pathology) and isolates them in the suburbs, to the criminalization of African American culture especially youth, in which the stereotype of the pathological black family operates. She also shows how these developments usher in a new type of governmental surveillance and management of the poor. Fostered by groups like ALEC, conservatives have gone on to promote laws that have reduced the discretion of judges, increased mandatory sentences and created a permanent population of prisoners incarcerated for relatively trivial crimes. Once the poor, especially the African-American poor, are seen as criminal and socially deviant, punitive government action is easily justified to change their behavior. For Greenbaum. the carcerial state illustrates this a type of neo-liberal paternalism, a form of governmental management of the poor and minorities. Similarly, the Clinton era welfare to work reform, reinforced the image of the unproductive welfare recipient incapable of middle class self-regulation. In order to qualify for aid recipients are subject to constant testing for drugs and monitored for proof of their willingness for work.

Still Greenbaum’s characterization of the Clinton era reforms as reactionary is misleading. However misguided, DLC centrists thought that by proposing a politics of personal responsibility they would cut the ground under conservatives and set the stage for renewed anti-poverty efforts.[1] Even Moynihan, however, by then a senator, recognized the fallacies in this argument and foresaw the likelihood that Clinton’s welfare reform would create greater extreme poverty. Counter to Clinton’s expectations, these reforms did not generate support for anti-poverty initiatives but served to reinforce preconceptions about the pathological qualities of those who live in poverty. In her haste to document the reactionary retrenchment of the welfare state she sometimes misses important difference between the players.

Under neo liberalism many public institutions were privatized and marketized including social services. With the outsourcing of public services, a new group of entrepreneurs stepped in to fill the lacuna. Greenbaum decries these private and even non-profit groups who benefit financially from poverty. Her prime example is Ruby Payne’s aha! Process Program. Although rooted in dubious social science and personal testimony, Payne successfully marketed an anti-poverty program that claimed to discover the sources of poverty in the distinctive class cultures of the poor, middle class and wealthy.  The poor family is an intergenerational structure which passes on poverty from its parents to its progeny and is morally deficient.  Greenbaum points out the condescending character of Payne’s approach.  She assumes that middle and upper class reformers possess a moral and intellectual superiority. They know best how to mentor poor people and remedy a culture that has left the poor with damaged capacities and little self-control. Payne ignores widespread evidence the wealthy are less compassionate and have fewer moral scruples than the rest of society.

Taken together Geary and Greenbaum are excellent guides to the career of Moynihan’s concept. They provide a cautionary tale about the way in which the democratic impulses of postwar American politics have been subverted by the tensions inherent in its dominant form of liberal democratic practice. The distrust of popular initiatives and social movements combined with the assumptions of elite expertise, inhibited movement towards policies that would have bring structural reform and democratic inclusion into the American political system. I prefer the historical complexity of Geary’s approach to Greenbaum’s sometimes blanket characterization of welfare policy as an uninterrupted process of reaction, but the reader will profit from both studies. My main reservation concerns the fact that both authors examine primarily elite and academic discussion and not the reception of these ideas by ordinary citizens

Geary focuses primarily on the ideological tensions in liberalism. Greenbaum however, raises questions of the social construction of knowledge via the question of poverty knowledge: “how do we know, or think we know what poverty is and, more important what are its causes” (p 139). This is an important question but Greenbaum too focuses primarily on how policy professionals and academics construct this knowledge and not the knowledge of ordinary social actors.  Such an approach to the construction of everyday knowledge would have fit well with her emphasis on studies that take the perspectives of the poor seriously When she does take up questions of social construction, she sometimes falls into functionalist platitudes. She claims that those in power tend to like ideas that support their point of view even if they are poorly thought out.  While true, this is a circular explanation. It does not tell us how power interests structure public discourse for example though control of media, through social and political hegemony in which issues are defined and their relevance delimited. More important it does not show how the individuals accept these ideas and give them meaning in their own lives. Why have many Americans accepted reactionary ideas and the characterization of African American families as criminal or deviant?  Why have authoritarian attitudes also increased in our society.

Greenbaum rejects the approach of the elite expert who wants to direct social change from above.  Culture based welfare reform like relocating poor, supporting marriage and individual tutoring are forms of expert driven neo-liberal social engineering which have by and large failed. They rarely included reference to the inequalities generated though political economic forces which continue to undermine viable solutions. Instead of band aid solutions like mentoring, structural reform is needed:” Without reforming distorted structures of banking, real estate, criminal justice, public education and civic participation” Greenbaum notes, “these measures will not stanch the tide of poverty.” (p142) The real causes lie elsewhere in low wages and the lack of jobs.

Greenbaum supports a collaborative community approach, which hearkens back to some of the original anti-poverty programs of the 60’s. It rests on the idea that “poor people have valuable insights and creative energy to offer in finding solutions to the problems they face” (p 145). Community organization and strong involvement by those directly impacted by policy is a central to this approach to the problems of poverty. Moynihan rejected community based approaches, and in the ensuing years, Greenbaum thinks, the matter not has progressed much. Policy researchers do not listen to the poor and do not take their experiences, feelings and concerns seriously. Their voices are rarely heard and they often lack political influence. In ignoring these voices however, researchers often employ their own middle class assumptions and produce unsubstantiated research and poor policy. The reason these failed approaches continue is not social scientific but ideological.

 The community based approach also requires that we change the relation of the researcher and the policy analyst to groups studied.  While Greenbaum does not reject empirical research, she thinks we also need to incorporate interpretive approaches and participant observation studies. We should try to understand individuals as they understand themselves in their own social world. She is critical of an excessive reliance on large date studies and quantitative methods. No matter how sophisticated its techniques of measurement, social research is an inherently normative enterprise. It is never value-free technical enterprise. This is clear in Moynihan’s own work.  Although his criticisms of the welfare state were based in his moral concerns he claimed they were based in neutral scientific research. Normative issues were concealed as empirical facts. Yet it is impossible to separate out the normative elements from these policy proposals.

I suggest that we need to take this idea further. We need more collaborative notions of social research.  Rather than being the subject or recipient of socially engineered policies in which they study have no say, the members of the community are active participants in both politics and policy.[2] Researches are co-participants in this process. Their claims of expertise can never be assumed in advance. They must be proven in action and discussion. Participants can articulate their own concerns and organizing for their own benefit, but they also have the capacity to criticize the assumptions, procedures and conclusions of those who study them.

 

 

 



[1] Schram, Sanford and Joe Soss 2006. “Welfare reform as a failed political strategy: Evidence
and explanations for the stability of public opinion.” Focus vol 24 no 3 :17-23; and Schram and Soss 2007. “A Public Transformed? Welfare Reform as Policy Feedback.” APSR Vol 101 no 1:111-127
[2] Caterino, Brian, The Practical Import of Political Inquiry New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2016